New Year's Eve

Congratulations!

If you are reading this you have (or nearly have) successfully completed the calendar year 2008. Tonight will be the time-honored tradition of celebrating the new year in hopes of it being better than the previous one, or something like that. Then the traditional fireworks, followed by some more partying and then the drunk dodge home (The night of the 31st/morning of the 1st is considered the most dangerous time to be on the roads as it has the highest number of drunk-driving related accidents, therefore the effort to dodge all these drunks).

I’m off to go pick some stuff from my fireworks stash to blow up tonight. Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas

I just got home from dropping Brenda off at her house. It has been snowing most of the evening, so only a freak warm front that brings hot air and lots of rain in the next few hours will prevent me from having a white Christmas this year.

Merry Christmas!

White Christmas Update

So one party is cancelled today, while the other is on, so that should make my day slightly less hectic. It’s snowing outside and there’s currently 11 inches on the deck. Our igloo is fairing quite nicely with the added snow. Zach hates it but I did manage to get him to stay in the opening long enough to snap a few pics.


Click on either of the images to see the really big versions if you wish.

Seattle has taken it upon themselves once again to be the sole “defenders of the environment.” They are doing this by refusing to use salt on any of the icy roads because of the environmental impact that may pose. Apparently anything that gets spread onto the roads in Seattle eventually gets washed into Puget Sound and they haven’t yet done a multi-year, multi-million dollar study to determine if washing a few extra tons of sea-salt into the ocean will harm marine life or not. As Seattle is one of the hilliest (I didn’t know that was a real word, but spell check and the dictionary tell me it is) large cities in the country, not salting the roads is very dangerous. But then again this is Seattle and they look for any excuse to keep people from driving their cars anywhere, even if that reason is because it’s life-threatening to try to drive some of these roads that are sheets of ice.
Thank you Al Gore once again for giving us your global warming, otherwise we would surely be dead from what’s already likely to be the coldest December of my lifetime so far.

A White Christmas?

It might actually happen this year! Or at least a Christmas with some traces of snow left on the ground in varying shades of white, gray, and brown. It's been snowing/slushing all week and therefore most of our accumulated snow from the last week and a half hasn't melted yet. It started snowing the evening of the 12th and some of that was still around when it resumed snowing a few days later. From recent memory I recall traces of snow on the ground for 16 days in a row 2 years ago. We might have that beat if there’s still snow on Saturday.

I’m going to be all Christmas partied out by the end of this week. Our party that got snowed out last Saturday due to our nonexistent blizzard is rescheduled for Friday. There are two parties today (overlapping a bit) as well as another one on Saturday. I'm gonna try to make both tonight. I still haven’t decided if I want to go shopping later today before these parties start. I enjoy going out on Christmas Eve so I can make fun of the panicked people who need their last minute gifts for people. Not that I don’t often wait until the last minute, I’m just not panicked about it. And I've had all my shopping done for quite a few hours now anyway.

Border Update

So the night of November 30 my mom, my sisters, and my girlfriend were coming home from Mt Baker, while Dad and the dog stayed behind at the condo since there wasn’t room in the car for all 7 of us. We decided that since we were only a few miles from the Canadian border that we would swing through Canada for a quick stop, primarily because Brenda had never been there before. We also wanted to stop by a grocery store and buy a bunch of candy that cannot be bought in the US due to pesky FDA regulations (KinderEggs). So we stopped at Zellers, which is just like Target, and bought a bunch of random candy to bring home, then we stopped by Wendy’s for supper. We get back to the border only to wait just under an hour to actually get to the crossing point. After talking with the customs dude for a few minutes he asks to see our passports. None of us actually had a passport with us since we didn’t actually plan on leaving the country that afternoon, nor did we realize that finally needed one to get back into the US.
We were then sent to the holding area where we were supposed to talk to some other customs people to convince them that we are indeed US citizens and have a right to be in the US. Thanks to idiots in the government who think illegals need at least as many rights and privileges in the US as real citizens, a government issued drivers’ license is not proof of citizenship or even legal residency in the US. Also, the entry fee to enter the US legally for someone who cannot prove that they are a US citizen is about $570.
Thankfully my mom was able to talk our way into the country and we made it home in one piece, without having to shell out a quarter’s tuition to get home. The moral of this story, if you’re coming into the US, pretend to speak Spanish and don’t cross on a major road. That will save you from many problems.

Van Update

So as a follow-up to my post on December 1, a day or two actually means 2-3 weeks on this particular occasion. So our van is basically totaled now. Apparently there was a defect on the frame of the van where the steering box housing (if I remember correctly) which caused it to fail structurally. This is actually supposed to be one of the strongest parts of the vehicle as it basically supports the full weight of the vehicle and the full force of forcing the 4500 pounds of it to turn at whatever speed it happens to be traveling.
It also appears that this is not an isolated case, my mom did some research and found quite a few reports where owners have complained that the exact same thing has happened to them; the biggest difference is that most of these complaints were filed between 1994 and 1997 for the van that was built in 1993. My mom also thinks she can find a bunch of accident reports where the van did a similar thing at freeway speeds, killing everyone involved which would mean that the owner wouldn’t be able to file such a claim if they were in the van at the time.
My grandpa took the van from Mt. Baker to his house to look at it and discovered several large cracks in the frame with rust in them, indicating that the cracks have probably been there since we bought the van (15 years ago next week).
God was definitely watching over us as we have driven that van up and down the West coast several times, and even out east to the other coast. That it died while we were parking on the top of a mountain was a bit inconvenient, but if it had broke a few minutes earlier we probably would have plunged over a cliff, or if it failed after we left that would have been another cliff to plunge over.

Global Warming is Once Again Saving My Life

Thanks to Al Gore’s more useful invention, global warming, I am not dead right now. We are currently experiencing some of the coldest and nastiest conditions I can recall in my lifetime of living here in Seattle. With highs squeaking into the 20s and lows flirting with single digits (all Fahrenheit) and blizzard conditions over most of the region, I am warmly sitting in front of the raging woodstove with my laptop. We’ve got about 6 inches of snow on the ground at the moment, which is amazing; 6 inches of snow in a year is pretty good here, not to mention all at once.
I was actually stranded at home a good chunk of Friday and Saturday since I happen to be the only one in the house with a vehicle that has 4 wheel drive, therefore both of my parents took it upon themselves to borrow it several times to run errands and stuff like that. The weather people also claim that there will be 90mph gusts of wind from about midnight to early this afternoon, but I’ll believe that when I see it.

Now that I'm up and ready to leave for church, I just got a call from the Don that all services are canceled and that I can sleep in. As this morning is the first time all week that I've been out of bed before 11am (yay Christmas break) I really wish someone would have made that decision and let me know before I went to bed. Oh well I guess I'll read for a bit then nap for a few hours.

Funniest Car Listing

Here's a car listing for a Nissan Xterra that someone found on Craigslist and posted to Fark:

OK, let me start off by saying this Xterra is only available for purchase by the manliest of men (or women). My friend, if it was possible for a vehicle to sprout chest hair and a five o'clock shadow, this Nissan would look like Tom Selleck. It is just that manly.

It was never intended to drive to the mall so you can pick up that adorable shirt at Abercrombie & Fitch that you had your eye on. It wasn't meant to transport you to yoga class or Linens & Things. No, that's what your Prius is for. If that's the kind of car you're looking for, then just do us all a favor and stop reading right now. I mean it. Just stop.

This car was engineered by 3rd degree ninja super-warriors in the highest mountains of Japan to serve the needs of the man that cheats death on a daily basis. They didn't even consider superfluous nancy boy amenities like navigation systems (real men don't get lost), heated leather seats (a real man doesn't let anything warm his butt), or On Star (real men don't even know what the hell On Star is).

No, this brute comes with the things us testosterone-fueled super action junkies need. It has a 265 HP engine to outrun the cops. It's got special blood/gore resistant upholstery. It even has a first-aid kit in the back. You know what the first aid kit has in it? A pint of whiskey, a stitch-your-own-wound kit and a hunk of leather to bite down on when you're operating on yourself. The Xterra also has an automatic transmission so if you're being chased by Libyan terrorists, you'll still be able to shoot your machine gun out the window and drive at the same time. It's saved my bacon more than once.

It has room for you and the four hotties you picked up on the way to the gym to blast your pecs and hammer your glutes. There's a tow hitch to pull your 50 caliber anti-Taliban, self cooling machine gun. I also just put in a new windshield to replace the one that got shot out by The Man.

My price on this bad boy is an incredibly low $12,900, but I'll entertain reasonable offers. And by reasonable, I mean don't walk up and tell me you'll give me $5,000 for it. That's liable to earn you a Burmese-roundhouse-sphincter-kick with a follow up three fingered eye-jab. Would it hurt? Hell yeah. Let's just say you won't be the prettiest guy at the Coldplay concert anymore.

There's only 69,000 miles on this four-wheeled hellcat from Planet Kickass. Trust me, it will outlive you and the offspring that will carry your name. It will live on as a monument to your machismo.

Now, go look in the mirror and tell me what you see. If it's a rugged, no holds barred, super brute he-man macho Chuck Norris stunt double, then contact me. I might be out hang-gliding or BASE jumping or just chilling with my ladies, but I'll get back to you. And when I do, we'll talk about a price over a nice glass of Schmidt while we listen to Johnny Cash.

To sweeten the deal a little, I'm throwing in this pair of MC Hammer pants for the man with rippling quads that can't fit into regular pants. Yeah, you heard me. FREE MC Hammer pants.

Rock on.

Not really sure what to say to that but I was laughing pretty hard when I read it.

And It’s December Already

Wow, November went by fast. It seems like we just had Halloween and now Thanksgiving is already past us. So what have I done so far this month? I voted against a bunch of politicians and measures that still managed to win. I worked and went to school. I managed to study my Bible Quiz material and work out every single day during the month. I had two Thanksgivings last Thursday, at Brenda’s grandparents’ house and the other at my house. I was also stuck at the top of Mt. Baker Highway thanks to the steering rods sheering off the bolts in our van(thankfully while we were parking in the ski-area parking lot and not when we were driving the icy, winding, cliff-side roads to actually get to that parking lot) which means that our van is only drivable if you’re trying to drive it straight since the front tires won’t turn. And last night I was detained at the US/Canadian border since my ID is apparently no longer considered proof of citizenship. Good times, good times. More to come in the next day or two after I finish my Psych paper and my IT presentation.

Fifth of November

On this sad day it is time to once again remember the 5th of November. It is once again Guy Fawkes day! It has been 403 years since the attempt by the Catholics to blow up the Parliament building while in session and assassinate King James. In remembrance I might try to watch V for Vendetta sometime today.


Remember, remember, the 5th of November
Gunpowder Treason and plot ;
I know of no reason why the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.

Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes,
'Twas his intent.
To blow up the King and the Parliament.
Three score barrels of powder below.
Poor old England to overthrow.
By God's providence he was catch'd,
With a dark lantern and burning match

Holloa boys, Holloa boys, let the bells ring
Holloa boys, Holloa boys, God save the King!

Hip hip Hoorah !
Hip hip Hoorah !

A penny loaf to feed ol'Pope,
A farthing cheese to choke him.
A pint of beer to rinse it down,
A faggot of sticks to burn him.
Burn him in a tub of tar,'
Burn him like a blazing star.
Burn his body from his head,
Then we'll say: ol'Pope is dead.


"People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people." I'm a bit more afraid of my government than I used to be, but I fear people more since they're mostly just the stupid, unwashed masses. Time to arm yourselves a bit more heavily and head for the hills.

Oh $#(^!

Enough said for now.

Goals

I set two goals for myself today. The first was to run 5 miles; the second was to finish my Mark book. As of a few minutes ago I finished the first goal by going 5.32 miles in 61 minutes. The second is one I haven’t started working on yet today. I’ll just have to update this again before I go to bed to let the world know that I’ve either completed my set task or gave up in miserable failure. Expect new update within the next four hours…

Update

I have 15 of 42 pages completely done, so I'm much farther behind that I want to be, but I'm tired and am going to bed now.

*Sigh*

Here is an article I read last night called "545 People". I pretty much agree with all of it, so I'm pasting it here. If you really want to read it on its original page you can find it here.

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.

Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits , WHY do we have deficits?

Have you ever wondered why, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?

You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does. You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does. You and I don't write the tax code. Congress does. You and I don't set fiscal policy. Congress does. You and I don't control monetary policy. The Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices - 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country. I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank. I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.
Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.

What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.

The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted - by present facts - of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.

If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red.

If the Army & Marines are in IRAQ, it's because they want them in IRAQ.

If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.

There are no insoluble government problems.

Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like “the economy,” “inflation,” or “politics” that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.

They, and they alone, have the power.

They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses, provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees. We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!

-Charlie Reese

I have no incumbent representatives or senators worth voting for, and at this point I'll vote for anyone that isn't them. Obama really scares me so I'm also willing to vote for anyone running against him, even if it means sucking it up and voting for someone I've never liked, such as McCain.

Hershey No Longer Makes Chocolate

For those who haven't heard, the Hershey Company has announced that it will no longer be producing Milk Chocolate. They have made the decision to replace cocoa butter in their products with vegetable oil and chocolate flavorings in order to save money. FDA regulations say that nothing sold as Milk Chocolate can contain vegetable oil, therefore Hershey is removing Milk Chocolate from its labels. I love Milk Chocolate and even eat the Hershey stuff, but I'm not going to be buying it again if they make it gross like those cheapy brands that my grandma likes to buy.

And So It Begins…Again…

I’m currently sitting in the classroom waiting for my second class to start and am now bored. So in the unlikely event that this post is read, and the unlikelier event that someone is interested, there it is. IT Management should be an interesting class from what I’ve gathered from our only class so far, and I hope my other classes are at least as interesting. That is all for the time being.

Pence Opposes Bush Administration Bailout Plan

Representative Mike Pence is nearly alone from what I’ve heard in his opposition to the massive giveaway to failing companies. Here’s what he has to say:

“Our financial markets are in turmoil and the Administration was right to call for decisive action to prevent further harm to our economy but nationalizing every bad mortgage in America is not the answer.

“The Administration’s request amounts to the largest corporate bailout in American history. Congress should act, but should act in a way that protects the integrity of our free market and protects the American taxpayer from more debt and higher taxes.
“To have the freedom to succeed, we must preserve the freedom to fail. Any solution to our present crisis must preserve our essential economic freedom.

“Congress should delay consideration of any legislation until the facts and competing solutions can be fully debated, consider alternatives to massive government spending and figure out how to pay for the solution through budget cuts and reform instead of more debt or taxes.

“Congress must not hastily embrace a cure that may do more harm to our economy than the disease of bad debt

“Before any bailout is enacted, Congress must set itself on an unalterable path to truly overhaul these Government Sponsored Enterprises from the top down and hold those accountable, in and out of government, who drove them, and our financial sector, to the brink of bankruptcy. Some important work is already underway, but additional reforms are needed. Even now, we read that the Treasury Department is using Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to purchase many of these bad mortgages while it seeks the authority to purchase them all. Congress should also ensure that these GSEs can no longer pose a systemic risk to the entire economy while placing them on a brisk schedule to be fully private companies with no guarantee of taxpayer support in times of trouble. And Congress should immediately repeal the Affordable Housing Fund, which will actually siphon off capital from these under-capitalized entities, in order to fund left-wing, third party organizations.

“Next, Congress must consider all available options to put our nation’s economy back on its feet. There are no easy answers but there are alternatives to massive government spending.

“Indexing the Capital Gains tax to inflation (which the Treasury Department can do without any help from Congress), or suspending it for one year, would release an enormous amount of capitol into our economy. Passing an energy bill that lessens the price of gasoline at the pump through more domestic drilling, wind, solar, nuclear and conservation would bring relief to family budgets and create American jobs. Establishing an entitlement reform commission to develop bipartisan solutions to the crushing weight of entitlements would strengthen the American dollar.

“These and other alternatives to a massive federal bailout must be fully considered and debated before Congress acts.

“Finally, any new expenditure of taxpayer dollars should be paid for with fiscal discipline and reform. If Congress decides to spend nearly 1 trillion dollars on a corporate bailout, it must find budget savings to prevent that cost from being passed along to the American people.

“We must address this crisis with forethought, creativity and fiscal discipline. Protecting the American taxpayer from higher debt and taxes and renewing our belief in the power of the free market must be our guide.”

I hope I hear more politicians echoing his sentiments in the next days and weeks ahead.

Moral of the Story, Don’t Do What the Government Says

So the government wants to spend roughly a TRILLION dollars of your and my money to bail out banks from around the world who hold too much bad mortgage debt. Why are they holding this bad debt? Because they either gave mortgages to people who could not afford to pay them back or they bought these mortgages from other banks at a discount. Why did these banks lend money to people who had no business borrowing that much money? Because the government told them to. Why did the government tell them to? Because more people owning houses is apparently more important than more people actually being able to afford to own houses.
Should the government be responsible for bailing out these huge banks? Maybe. The government is responsible for these banks issuing hundreds of billions of dollars in loans to people who should not have qualified for these loans in the first place. So in that sense the government should be responsible for fixing a problem they caused. HOWEVER, most solutions the government implements are usually worse than the problems that they created, so it could actually be better for everyone if they did nothing at all.
Listening to the random news shows on TV, many people are criticizing the proposed plan because it only helps the wealthy banking industry and leaves out the poor people who are facing foreclosure. The poor people who can’t pay the loans that they never should have received in the first place is that cause of the problem. If the government does some sort of bail out of these people I hope that there are riots in every street of the country for rewarding people for being stupid at the expense of those smart enough to not get in this situation.
Is there more to this whole situation? Probably. Ultimately it will mean that I’ll need good credit in order to get a mortgage in the next few years.

Reading List 2008

Here's the list of all books I recall reading so far this year. For the sake of simplicity, listening to the audio book on my Zen will count as reading. I think this is about average for me, but this is the first year in several that I've actually tried to keep track.

1984*
   George Orwell
The Amber Spyglass
   Philip Pullman
Atlas Shrugged
   Ayn Rand
Belles on Their Toes
   Frank & Ernestine Gilbreth
Cheaper by the Dozen
   Frank & Ernestine Gilbreth
Freakonomics
   Steven D. Levitt
Godless
   Ann Coulter
The Golden Compass
   Philip Pullman
Good to Great*
   Jim Collins
Have Space Suit Will Travel
   Robert A. Heinlein
How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)*
   Ann Coulter
If Democrats Had Any Brains They’d Be Republicans
   Ann Coulter
Inventing a Nation
   Gore Vidal
The Millionaire Mind
   Thomas J. Stanley
The Millionaire Next Door*
   Thomas J. Stanley & William D. Danko
Noble Vision
   Gen LaGreca
The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History
   Thomas E. Woods Jr.
The Rolling Stones
   Robert A. Heinlein
The Star Beast
   Robert A. Heinlein
Starship Troopers*
   Robert A. Heinlein
Stranger in a Strange Land
   Robert A. Heinlein
The Subtle Knife
   Philip Pullman
What’s So Great About America
   Dinesh D’Souza
The World is Flat
   Thomas L. Friedman

* Books I've read before

Books in my stack of reading material that I'm currently reading or will be reading soon:
The ACLU vs America
   Alan Sears & Craig Osten
Built to Last
   Jim Collins & Jerry Porras
The Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States
   Benjamin F. Morris
The Fountainhead
   Ayn Rand
My Job Went to India (And All I Got Was This Lousy Book)
   Chad Fowler
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress*
   Robert A. Heinlein

Free Pop and Popcorn

Parkway Plaza Theater is giving away free pop and popcorn to everyone to gives them one of these coupons this weekend. Just print one out per person and enjoy.

I win!

The Stranger, the more hippy of the ‘news’papers in Seattle wrote an article criticizing the current state superintendant for not being able to answer 3 questions they gave her from the WASL* (Washington Assessment of Student Learning) test. These particular questions are logic problems used to evaluate students’ reasoning processes. Students are instructed to “Write to help explain your best thinking using words, numbers, or pictures” when answering these questions. I believe partial credit is given to those who do not correctly answer them but show how they got their answers. The three questions given to her are as follows:

Tom, Dick and Harry work in a bank. One is the manager, one is the cashier and one is the teller. The teller, who was an only child, earns the least. Harry, who married Tom's sister, earns more than the manager. What position does each person fill?

Penny works in the Package Palace. It is Penny’s job to stamp the sides of packages that are not touching the floor and not touching another package. Today there are 25 packages on the floor. Penny put the packages into 5 stacks, and the sides of the stacks touch. How many sides of packages must penny stamp.

The local recycling plant has just bought a new metal compactor that produces a smaller cube of scrap iron than does the older machine. Somebody noticed, however, that the combined volumes of one cube from each compactor was numerically the same as the combined lengths of all their edges. What are the dimensions of the cubes, if you consider only integral solutions?

The superintendant, Terry Bergeson, only attempted the first two questions and got both of them wrong. I tried and got all three right, therefore I’m now accepting write in votes for the position as the new State School Superintendant.

*The WASL test was put together by a panel of teachers and representatives from the largest employers in Washington to evaluate the basic knowledge and reasoning abilities of Washington high school students. Those who pass the test show that they meet a satisfactory level of reasoning ability required to be hired by these companies. Sadly, few students pass every section of this test on their first attempt, and most teachers (including the superintendant) fail as well.